


Shrine

by willowoftheriver



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Devotion, Episode: s05e01 Nameless Faceless, Gen, Humor, M/M, Obsession, Stalking, Unrequited Love, things you find when you break into someone's apartment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 00:44:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/628358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowoftheriver/pseuds/willowoftheriver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Foyet takes the opportunity to search Hotch's apartment while he's lying in wait, and discovers that creepy stalking isn't just for serial killers anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shrine

George Foyet sighed in boredom, idly twirling his knife in his hand. It was his favorite, the one he'd used on dear Mandy Bertram all those years ago, and then himself. He'd polished and sharpened it to perfection, thinking all the while how terribly fitting it was going to be to use on Hotchner, but here it was, still clean and glinting and very free of blood.

He'd snuck into Hotchner's apartment thinking that he'd only have to wait a little while until he got the opportunity to strike. Oh, how very wrong he'd been.

He'd been in this apartment for a fucking  _long_  time, and there hadn't been even one hint of its owner. Where the hell was he? China? Was he on some case that was really  _so_ complicated that it was taking this long? Or did the man just never come home, and the apartment was just for show?

Actually, given how unlived in the place looked, the last option didn't seem so impossible. Foyet had given it a cursory search when he'd first arrived to try to get a better feel of the man—know thy enemy, and all that—but other than some signs of the kid, Jack's, presence and the address book entry on the ex-wife, Haley, he hadn't come up with much.

Honestly, he felt a little bit cheated. At least Shaunessy had had a life  _to_  ruin. Was there really that much he could do to make Hotchner's life more empty, boring, and desolate than it already was?

Unfortunately, he'd already offered him the deal. Couldn't really back out now.

So, Foyet resigned himself to passing the time by digging a little deeper. He didn't bother wearing gloves as he opened drawers and dug through closets, as really, after this apartment inevitably became a crime scene and the CSIs pulled his fingerprints off of everything, it would really be the icing on the cake for Hotchner to know he'd been touching all his stuff.

The only vaguely revealing things he found were some pictures—one older, of an entire family, two boys and a mother smiling falsely, unconsciously leaning away from the father ( _daddy issues, how familiar)_  and one newer, of a man with atrocious highlights in his hair wearing an apron, standing in what looked like a restaurant kitchen.

The brother, maybe?

Eh. Didn't really matter. If the only photographs of him were hidden away in the back of a closet, they couldn't be close.

Sighing again—he seemed to be doing that a lot since he entered this neutral color schemed hell—he put the photos back, shut the closet door, and reentered the hallway, where he made his way to the only door he'd yet to open.

Unlike any of the other doors, it was locked, but as thirty four victims and the Massachusetts Department of Corrections could all attest, George Foyet never came unprepared. The lock was a bit more than he would've expected for something on a bedroom door, but he got it open without much effort.

He turned the handle, swung the door in, and looked at the room beyond.

And looked.

And looked.

And decided that okay, maybe Hotchner  _wasn't_  all that boring after all.

The room had hardwood floors instead of carpet and the walls were painted red. Candles flickered in sconces, casting dim light and shadows across the focal point of the room.

Which appeared to be some kind of . . . altar. A few steps led up to a table covered with a white cloth, on which sat a multitude of seemingly random objects, all artfully arranged. A hideous pair of glasses, several mismatched socks, a few locks of hair in an airtight glass display case, some empty Styrofoam coffee cups, a crumpled Rice Krispie wrapper, what appeared to be a dirty syringe, and was that a small vial of blood?

At the center of the altar, elevated slightly above all the objects with two candles burning on either side of it, some incense in a dish below it, and a garland of flowers hanging over the frame, was a picture of a smiling young man with brown hair and eyes that Foyet distantly recognized as being a member of the BAU present during his arrest.

Blinking, stunned for the first time in recent memory, Foyet took a step into the room, glancing around.

On the walls in between the sconces were more pictures of the same man with various haircuts and outfits. In some of them he seemed to be aware he was being photographed; others, not so much. A few articles of clothing hung under some of the frames, usually sweater vests or dress shirts, but there was also a pair of badly burnt pants with a small plaque beneath them commemorating the year 2006. Between two of the pictures was a shelf lined with what seemed to be college dissertations, all written by a 'Spencer Reid'.

On either side of the altar, like columns, were two small display cases, each bearing a bullet. Taking another step forward, he squinted at the gold plaques on the front.

_Phillip Dowd,_  said one.

_Tobias Hankel_ , said the other.

Foyet had a sneaking suspicion about what those bullets had been pulled out of.

Slowly—very, very slowly—he backed out of the room. Shut the door, making sure to redo the lock. Turned around and walked back to the front room, where he sat blinking at the neutral-colored wall.

It was extremely rare that anything really shocked him. Even though he'd done his own fair share of stalking, he really wasn't sure what to make of  _that_ , though he did know for sure that the game had just gotten a lot more interesting.

Because, for the first time in his life, he was just a tiny bit creeped out.

**Author's Note:**

> Because you just know every member of the BAU has a creepy stalker shrine to Reid somewhere in their house. Or that's my theory, at least. :D


End file.
